Travelers doing a last-minute scan of a room before checking out often leave behind portable-device battery chargers. They are easy to miss, due to their dark color and especially if the wall outlet is behind furniture. You can easily forget in the morning the charger you plugged in the night before for charging. This problem is exacerbated by the wide variety of mobile devices, each with its own charger that a traveler potentially has to keep track of.
Hotels typically have an abundant supply of left-behind chargers.
However, they do not contact the guest due to privacy concerns and the time and effort that would be involved. Also, the hotel often does not know the contact information if the reservation was made through online services.
Shipping the charger back to its owner still leaves the owner without a means for charging the device until the charger arrives, which could leave the device inoperative for several days.
Purchasing a new charger that is compatible with the device also could entail inconvenience and delay.
Most chargers, even when not charging the portable-device battery, consume electrical power, even though some electrically disconnect from the wall current, as described in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2010/0001684 to Eastlack (hereinafter “the Eastlack patent”), which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. Thus, forgetting chargers often wastes energy, until the charger is discovered and unplugged.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,373,229 to Slusky (hereinafter “the Slusky patent”), entitled “Battery Charging System for Portable Electronic Devices”, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, checks whether a battery is electrically connected to a charger. If it is not, Slusky generates an alarm reminding the user to charge the portable device.
Notably, the checking is at a particular time of day pre-set by the user for when charging is intended to commence, and the checking is for a current, existing connection regardless of when disconnection, if any, actually occurred. Accordingly, the Slusky device would not be effective in alerting the user that a charger is about to be left behind.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2010/0225493 A1 to Zishaan, entitled “Improvement to Response Units,” (hereinafter “Zishaan”), discloses a travel packing assisting system that, in connection with a user's change in location, issues a user warning signal specific to one or more articles to be packed. A detector detects when the article is in a travelling mode of use.
In a Zishaan embodiment comprising both a charger and a portable device chargeable by the charger, the detector detects, among other things, when the charger is separated from the portable device.
The device, such as a mobile phone, and the charger both have wireless transceivers, the device detecting the travelling mode. The device features a user interface for prompting the user with regard to travel plans and for entering scheduling information.